The storm system was becoming less intense as it moved east Wednesday, CNN meteorologist Rob Marciano said, but the National Weather Service issued tornado and severe storm warnings and said extreme weather still was possible.

President Bush said Wednesday he had called the governors of the affected states to offer help and to tell them that "the American people hold those who suffered up in prayer."

The Federal Emergency Management Agency was deploying teams to the area, Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said Wednesday.

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In Jackson, Tennessee, a tornado trapped Union University students and retirees in collapsed buildings, said Julie Oaks, a spokeswoman for the state's Emergency Management Agency. Watch how the tornado devastated the campus »

"It looks like a war zone," said university President David Dockery. "Cars and trucks thrown from one side of the campus to the other."

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Company officials believe a tornado hit a compressor station for the Columbia Gulf Transmission company in Hartsville, Tennessee, about 40 miles northeast of Nashville, setting off a spectacular natural gas fire. Watch flames leap hundreds of feet »

The blaze could be seen in the night sky for miles around, with flames shooting "400, 500 feet in the air," said Tennessee Emergency Management spokesman Donnie Smith.

The station was damaged significantly, but there were no reports of injuries or fatalities, said Columbia spokesman Kelly Merritt. "We would not have had any employees there [overnight]." The blaze was put out early Wednesday morning, he said.

The tornado cut a wide swath near the facility, flattening the home of Dara Reasonover.

"It just took the house and everything and my horses and my dog," a shaken Reasonover said, as the glow of the fire lit the sky behind her. "I don't know if they're alive or dead, but we'll make it."

In Arkansas, the storm killed 13 people in six counties, the state Emergency Management Agency said.

In the city of Atkins, a man, woman and child in the same family were killed, county Judge Jim Ed Gibson told CNN. The storms overturned trucks and other vehicles along Interstate 40, closing the highway briefly, he said.

Storms also ripped through Kentucky, killing at least seven people. A state of emergency was declared in Muhlenberg County, and Kentucky National Guard troops were deployed, state emergency spokesman Buddy Rogers said.

In Alabama, the storms killed four people, three in Lawrence County and one in Jackson County, officials said.

Resident Roger Riddle said that when he heard the tornado siren, he rounded up his children and took them to a community storm shelter.

When he emerged, he saw the twister traveling away from them and "total destruction."

"We've got things tore up, and the house across the road from us is completely gone," Riddle said.

In Mississippi, the director of the state's Emergency Management Agency, Mike Womack, estimated that 20 to 30 tornadoes pounded the state in areas above the state capital of Jackson.

"We have no reported fatalities, and that is extremely fortunate," he said, given the havoc the storm caused elsewhere.E-mail to a friend